No Baby, No Cry – Musings of a Tired Father

It’s 02:00 in the morning, I’m already very tired and my baby daughter will not stop crying. Well, I guess that is not entirely fair, she will stop crying for a couple of minutes, but then start-up again in full force. What is a new dad to do? How long can this go on?

I go through the standard list of items to get a baby to stop crying:

Burp

Check diaper

Swaddle

Motion

Feed (already been fed)

But alas, my efforts are in vain as the crying continues.

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I actually started writing this post about 4 weeks ago. The words above the “BREAK” line were my initial thoughts on many sleepless nights due to a crying baby. However in the last 4 weeks, the crying has lessened significantly. Now it seems that most nights I am able to feed, burp, change a diaper, hold my daughter, and she goes back to sleep with very little crying.

In fact, I just finished the 11:00PM feeding; the burping and changing are also done. Instead of crying, she spent 10-15 minutes “talking”, which consists of cute little baby babbling of simple vowel sounds. I spent these few minutes listening and smiling (instead of fretting and worrying) as we “communicated” with sounds and facial expressions.

Things are changing for the better. She has finished her little talk, and is now sleeping, a mere 40 minutes after starting this feeding session. Dare I say, at 10 weeks, that her colic is starting to abate? Can we look forward to, in the near future, sleeping stretches that last longer than one and a half to two hours? I certainly hope so. Most books that I am reading note that by three months old, most babies sleep 5 to 6 hours a night straight; this seems like a crazy pipe dream.

So what is a new dad to do? Enjoy this time with my daughter, carry on, and start hoping for some normal sleep patterns. Oops, I just sneezed and woke her up…oh well.

My name is Paul and I am The Unexpected Dad.My wife and I married late in life and we didn’t really expect to have children (thus the title of my blog). We weren’t opposed to the idea of having children, but just assumed that it was not in the cards for us.

I write about the rather unexpected journey of fatherhood, please join me!

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Comments

You are doing great I think. The attitude you have is as it should be I think, those moments when she’s crying and won’t go to sleep… enjoy them like you did when she spent time “chatting” with you. It could be that all those things you tried aren’t what was craved, but sometimes all they crave is “us” and it takes them 10 to 20 minutes to realize that you are here and to calm down.